Without citing the bible, what marks the bible as the one book with God's message?

[Ketzer]

Oh come on!  Where are the god botherers when you want them?  Let me try to sleep in the daytime when I've worked graveyard and without fail, Witnesses would be at my door trying to convert me.  

Here I've been willing to concede lots of things about the bible and the Christian god AND I've invited you to guide me to recognize the bible as the true word of God - and not so much as a peep!  Damn, do you or don't you want to save me?  I'm like a voice crying in the wilderness and not one of God's children will show me the way.  Pity .. I could sense a change coming too.

It would my theory that the real Christians avoid places with the name "Atheist" in it.
Most people have never read the entire bible. This includes alot of people claiming to be Atheist.
However, you will find people well versed in the bible on both sides of the debate.
Therefore, a real christian acts on "faith" not fact.
A real Atheist works on "fact" not faith.

Nobody is as foolish debating someone either equally or more knowledgeable on the subject, than the person starting it.
Christians can not intimidate or scare a pure Atheist no matter how hard they try.
Reason, an Atheist knows their value and worth in life as a person is not based on a belief in some unseen deity or Architect. They also know that true forgiveness for things they feel badly about comes from within their own conscience not some deity. And this being the biggest one of all, what it will be like when we are dead is exactly what it was like before we were born. Except, we have created memories during this short existence both for ourselves and others. We don't fear Hell because we know through simple logical thought and reasoning that there is no hell. Atheists do not need of a crutch to justify or dismiss their actions be it good or bad. If you do bad things to people, the devil didn't force you. You do it because you're a bad person and should be skinned alive in the most horrible manner. Simple. If you do good things, it's because you're a good person and should have a life that's good.

[Silver]

Whatever happened to Whateverist?

[brewer]

Whatever happened to Whateverist?

He's still posting current stuff on the net. There's a Heidi memorial so she's passed. And I see a new pup, Ember. Recent pics of Lia also.

I think he got tired the internet hostility between atheists and theists, dem and pubs, ...........

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I've heard of lots of scholarship being done to establish the existence of persons with the right names inhabiting the right places at the right times.  But lets cut to the chase.  Suppose there was a Mary and a Jesus and a Paul and Sneezy and Rudolph and whoever else the bibles says is part of its story.  Lets go ahead and grant you that the stuff the bible says happened is right too - within reason.  I can't grant you a talking snake, God speaking from a burning bush, a man living in a whale, a resurrection, a flood covering Mt. Everest, the story of creation or anything else that suggests the supernatural.  But I will grant, for the sake of argument, that every natural event described in the bible is historically accurate.

Given that, why should anyone believe the bible is the word of a supernatural god?  Why should anyone think its god exists at all?  

Okay Christians, again only for the sake of argument, lets suppose that god does exist and the bible records an attempt on its part to communicate with mankind.  How do you justify a literal reading of the bible?  Perhaps a poetic reading was intended, not by the scribes, but by your god.  If this god of yours is as ineffable and other worldly as is claimed, why would you think that such a being could communicate with beings as limited as ourselves in any way other than parables and poetry.  You may really be missing the whole message by concretizing the poetic.  

Remember Christians, the challenge is to justify 1) that the bible is the special book and 2) that a literal interpretation is the one intended by your god .. without (for obvious reasons) citing the bible itself.  I await your guidance.

 You're preaching to the choir mate, but I'll give my opinion:

 First, the believer needs to establish their god(s) exist. That has never been done so far. A being who doesn't exist cannot write or inspire anything.

Jewish tradition states that the Torah (the first five books of the old testament) were written by Moses. He is clamed by Judaism to have existed in the reign of Ramses The Great. He lived in the14th century bce. The Torah was written ca 500bce.  

Recent archaeology has shown that the Exodus almost certainly did not occur and that Moses almost certainly did not exist.

The Torah and the Tanakh are the mythology of Judaism.

The Gospels were written by anonymous authors at the earliest about 60 years after the putative death of Jesus. That means there are no eyewitness accounts of the life, teachings and death of Yoshua Ha Notzri . There are many contradictions. Perhaps the most glaring are the different accounts of the resurrection.  

Saul of Tarsus is said to have written the letters called 'The Epistles' in the New Testament. As far as I know there are five letters known to be forgeries, and there are  doubts about the rest.

The Epistles of Saul are said to be the earliest books of the New Testament, being written 20-30 years after Jesus' death. It is generally agreed that Saul didn't meet Jesus.

The origin of the epistles:  Saul  of Tarsus was allegedly on his way to Damascus when he fell of his horse and hallucinated.
As far as I'm concerned, that's calling a spade a spade:  If a person claims to have hear god speak to him and to have had visions, he is deemed to be mentally well.   I suspect suffered from epilepsy or perhaps Schizophrenia. 

The New Testament is the mythology of Christianity, no more a history book than the Torah.

The above are my opinions. I don't claim to know the truth. My opinions outline what I think is probably the case, based on the writings of modern scholars such as Bart Erhrman and Israeli archeaologists Siberman and Filklestein


Anyone claiming their holy books are true attract the burden of truth. It is up to them to demonstrate the truth of those books. It is snot my responsibility to demonstrate they are untrue.

[T.J.]

You see if you look at the fine print then you'll see what appears to be Jesus's face on a cookie.

Totes divine proof of God!

[Paleophyte]

The origin of the epistles:  Saul  of Tarsus was allegedly on his way to Damascus when he fell of his horse and hallucinated.
As far as I'm concerned, that's calling a spade a spade:  If a person claims to have hear god speak to him and to have had visions, he is deemed to be mentally well.   I suspect suffered from epilepsy or perhaps Schizophrenia.

Diagnoses across such a great length of time and befuddlement are fraught with peril. The first difficulty would be establishing the existence of the patient.

The simpler explanation is that Saul of Tarsus was a convert who wanted the head job. Having never met Jesus he simply faked an audience with the big guy in order to establish some cult cred. It's a pretty standard power struggle that you see played out in many modern religions.

[Belacqua]

Christians can not intimidate or scare a pure Atheist no matter how hard they try.

I'm curious about this term "pure atheist." 

Are there impure atheists? What are they like?

[The Grand Nudger]

We wear rings and promise not to marry before we have sex.

[RBP3280]

Oh come on!  Where are the god botherers when you want them?  Let me try to sleep in the daytime when I've worked graveyard and without fail, Witnesses would be at my door trying to convert me.  

Here I've been willing to concede lots of things about the bible and the Christian god AND I've invited you to guide me to recognize the bible as the true word of God - and not so much as a peep!  Damn, do you or don't you want to save me?  I'm like a voice crying in the wilderness and not one of God's children will show me the way.  Pity .. I could sense a change coming too.

You seem to be just seeking and argument, not an honest discussion. If they can't use the material they have to debate their point of few there is no point in engaging. 

As for the Bible I believe it has some very sound advice for living a decent and heathy life. I'm not one that believes it isn't fallible as fundamentalist do. Actually I think the Gnostic Christians may have had a better understandings of Christ than the early church did. 

I came my beliefs because of my study of near death experiences and some of the stories and testimonies of the people that experienced them.

[Jehanne]

I used to believe in NDEs, also; I am now convinced that they are a natural phenomenon:

Intelligence Squared -- Death Is Not Final